Graduate Software Developer
Location: GB, CMD, London
Department: Technology
Salary range: 19000-19000
Employment type: Full-time
Required experience: Entry level
Required education: Bachelor's Degree
Industry: Marketing and Advertising
Function: Engineering

Company profile:
The Technical Team and offering at VML London has a very strong heritage dating back to the mid-nineties when the London office was founded. Back in those days we were one of the first few purely digital marketing agencies in London; and back then things were a lot more technically driven than they often are today; as such the Technology team here continues to enjoy a strong strategic influence on the work that the agency undertakes and the clients that we engage.It just works.Technology is brilliant when you don’t have to think about it. That’s what we strive for in our solutions. Our technology team has a strong strategic influence on the work we undertake and are involved as soon as the brief lands. They stay involved throughout strategy, creative concepting and design. Acting as important enablers, we bring new and emerging technology to the table to successfully marry the requirements of our clients with the vision of our creatives.Open standards, open minds.We aim to deliver the most elegant technical solution for your budget, and maintain a technology agnostic approach to development in order to achieve that. Technology can be expensive, both in terms of hard costs and costly mistakes, so we’re as careful with your money as we are with our own.   Perhaps that’s why some of our clients have been with us for over 10 years. When faced with a new problem our first instinct is always to see if someone else has already solved it. As such, the solutions we design are built on the rich eco-system of open source software (OSS); the proven and battle-tested kind that we know will not just do the job quickly and cost-effectively, but also robustly. Where OSS isn't appropriate we always favour solutions that are built to open standards that we know will integrate well with other technologies.Strong partnerships.Our work is complemented by strong partnerships with technology vendors and suppliers.   Proven over time, our established strategic relationships with many of the leaders in software, hardware and other technology solutions help ensure we’re able to continue to offer best-in-class technical solutions for our clients.What we do:High availability and high performance website architecture &amp; developmentWeb content management solutionsCreative technology ideationContent optimisation, search and analyticsHigh volume, multi-locale email campaignsMobile optimisationLocalisation

Job description:
Software engineering jobs in London’s digital advertising heartland! VML is part of the WPP network of advertising and marketing agencies. In the past three years, online marketing has evolved from simple email newsletters and campaign websites, to high performance, high availability web applications, mobile apps, Facebook integrations and digital out of home experiences, with creatively designed and highly interactive user interfaces. VML’s Technical department has similarly evolved into a professional software engineering organisation to meet these needs, bringing the rigorous quality methods of modern software factories to the digital marketing sector, and now has a number of graduate vacancies we are looking to fill ASAP.Role summary:As a Graduate Software Developer you will be interested and able to build modern interactive websites and web applications across desktop, tablet, mobile and emerging channels, including both high availability CMS driven sites with thousands of pages and campaign specific microsites including Facebook apps. Working in terms from 2 to 20 people in size, our software developers are tasked with building world class creative experiences for major brands in industries such as automotive, travel, video games, sports, luxury and retail, without compromising on the rigorous high quality software engineering required to build some of the world’s most popular websites. Building a website that can securely take millions of pounds in sales every day, or serve twenty thousand web pages per second to visitors from around the world, requires the kind of developer who is comfortable switching between server side languages like Java and PHP and client side languages such as JavaScript or Objective C, and has an understanding at both the macro systems level and the micro level of fine tuned performance is required to build systems with uninterrupted uptime that make efficient use of resources to minimize running costs.

Requirements:
Required Knowledge and skills:Programming in languages such as Java, Python, C++, JavaScript and Objective-CHTML and CSS, including HTML5 and CSS3Object Oriented Programming and component based software architecture designSoftware Engineering theory including requirements management, programming patterns, iterative and agile software development methodsUnderstanding of software development lifecycle including waterfall and agile approachesUnderstanding of black box and white box software testing techniques and V modelExcellent communication skills in writing documentation and giving presentations Useful extra knowledge and skills:Experience working in a commercial software development companyExperience building websites for friends and family or university societiesExperience building and publishing mobile appsTest Driven DevelopmentWe use the following technology frameworks in our work – AngularJS, Hadoop, Spring MVC, Hibernate  Key responsibilities:Building CMS templates in dynamic web server languages such as JSP and PHPEnsuring compatibility with modern, legacy and mobile/tablet web browsers and email clientsBuilding interactive UI controls using JavaScript, jQuery and jQuery pluginsBuilding Rich Email messages for eCRM compatible with major email clients such as Outlook, Gmail and iPhone MailTake responsibility for technical delivery of small projectsEnsure that the project is delivered to high standards of quality in all aspects including, but not limited to code, documentation and best practices Challenges of the roleCoping with multiple, sometimes overlapping work streamsBleeding edge technology changes requires a constant appetite for learning and improving Key relationships:Technical DirectorThe Graduate Software Developer needs to communicate regularly with the Technical Director to report project progress, discuss changes and improvements to working practices and strategy for the technical team’s development.Project ManagersThe Graduate Software Developer is accountable to their Project Managers for keeping to estimates or flagging blocking issues quickly

Benefits: